Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  He really did see her once, the last day of March. He was at Pick-n-Pay with Flo, rolling the cart down the aisle as he looked at the shelves. That’s how they collided, his cart bashing into hers, so his first words were: I’m sorry. Everyone was very polite. Flo asked about Jay, and Delores said, “He’s fine—much better”; and Flo said, “That’s good,” and they all smiled as if they believed it.

  Willy envied the women, the way Flo and Delores touched each other’s arms, so casually, the way they spoke in fragments of sentences and understood though they had never been friends. Women had a language he didn’t know, and he felt as clumsy as his father, as dense as Roy Wilkerson.

  At first he was ashamed, imagining how his mother might see Delores, supposing pity or soft judgment, thinking Flo would notice the slight tremor of her hands. He wanted one of them to forgive him. But Flo Hamilton didn’t look at Delores Tyler that way. She had washed the bodies of old women and shaved the cheeks of handsome boys; she had tied ribbons in the golden hair of little girls. She looked at the body and beyond it. Life was a mystery to her; death was certain.

  What were they saying? Something about June. The month, or a woman they knew? It didn’t matter. It was nothing that concerned him. He saw how unnecessary he was, how easily ignored, by his mother, his lover, how it had always been this way with women: his sisters tormented him, then ran away, slammed their door while he stood in the dark, forever on the other side. He knew, suddenly, that this was his father’s sorrow too, that Flo depended on him but did not need him.

  He longed to touch Delores, remembering her skin, all of it, neck and arm, surprising and soft, her belly under the satin camisole. In that room in South Bend, he was changed, beautiful boy, and she was everything he wanted. For an hour he was completely satisfied. He couldn’t recall another time in his life when he had known exactly what he wanted, couldn’t remember satiating any hunger. His life was a string of small denials, a succession of little no’s, an endless catalogue of moments when he’d said stop before he was full.

  The women’s talk had shifted to weather—blustery today; and fruit—overpriced; and husbands—who expected certain things on the table in certain quantities but who were tight with money. Willy had imagined seeing Delores a different way—drunk, dancing at the White Bull or careening through Woodvale Park. And in those scenes he always knew just what to do.

  But sober under the harsh lights of the store, she was graceful and needed nothing from him. She was a grown woman, mother of a crippled boy, wife of a cold man—long-suffering woman—lovely, sad, wearing blue shoes to match her blue jacket, all her golden hair pinned perfectly in place.

  He knew she might be drunk tonight, in disarray, one shoe lost under the bed, stockings torn. She might sit alone in the kitchen; she might pass out on the couch. But that was a private matter.

  Here, at midday, she was expert and efficient. She could touch his arm as they parted, lightly, with her fingers, lift them, quickly. She could say: “Don’t be a stranger, Willy,” and seem to look at him—but not look, could turn, wheel her cart away, not teetering on her high heels, not hurrying, but moving swiftly away from him while he stood, staring stupidly at the seams of her stockings, so his mother had to say: “Willy?”

  He was sure Flo guessed everything. But of course she didn’t, and that was worse, because even he could see how unbelievable it was to imagine that a woman like Delores Tyler would desire anything from a boy like him.

  He wanted to run after her, wanted her to drop her groceries in the parking lot so that they could kneel together and pick them up. He wanted to ask her if he could come by sometime, but he couldn’t bear the answer, couldn’t stand it if they only talked in the bright living room, sipping tea or vodka. And he couldn’t stand it if they drove away, if they climbed the stairs to another room where he could stroke her soft belly and hear his own name whispered while the candle guttered and burned out.

  He would have been surprised to know how close his thoughts were to hers, how proud she was of her self-control, how grateful for Willy’s silence. Driving home, she gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward to see more clearly. She knew she could have swayed the moment, touched his arm a second longer, held it more tightly, looked in his eyes when she spoke. She could have lingered in the store and struggled with her bags until he had to help.

  But for once, just for once, she spared herself all that, the questions and the longing, his hands in the dark, hers in the light.

  Much later that night, Willy dragged Main in the cruiser. He hoped he’d see the Chrysler and he hoped he wouldn’t. He wished the kid in the white Bel Air would jump a red light so he could write a ticket, wished he’d catch three teenage girls drinking beer in the alley behind the Mercantile. He wished one thing would happen. Then he’d get a coffee to go and sit on some side street with his lights off.

  He saw the Bel Air pick up speed as it rounded the loop behind the courthouse. He pressed closer. He finally had one. Thirty miles per hour, then thirty-two. The greasy-headed boy had hit forty by the time he ran his first red light, and Willy’s siren started wailing.

  The kid ran a second light and kept accelerating. Willy stayed on his tail, edging past fifty, wondering if this was worth it, wondering if he was the one making trouble by starting the chase.

  By the time they jumped the city limits, the boy in the Bel Air was doing sixty-three and showed no sign of slowing down. He was steady, a good driver. Focused, that’s what he was. He wasn’t thinking about deer leaping onto the highway; he wasn’t distracted by the lights of oncoming cars. He and the car were one machine, one animal; he watched the strip of road, nothing else.

  Already Willy was losing his nerve. Every time they rounded a curve he expected the kid to tap his brakes. He saw himself slamming into the rear end of the Bel Air, imagined both cars spinning, plunging toward the river. But that boy had skill, new tires and no need to slow down. Willy was losing him. Twice he thought he saw dark shapes moving across the road; twice he lifted his foot off the gas and felt the cruiser drift to the right.

  He couldn’t do it. He saw that now. Tomorrow he could track down the license number, go to the kid’s house. But he knew he wouldn’t do that either, knew he couldn’t tell his father: I gave up. He let himself fall behind—three car lengths then five. Did the boy know what was happening? The taillights of the Bel Air burned in the distance. Willy followed those lights for another mile, until they disappeared over the crest of a hill.

  He pulled to the shoulder. Gravel spit under his tires. He tried to clutch the wheel tighter to stop shaking. Even his fingers were weak. Loss of courage or will—was he a coward or a lazy sonuvabitch? He turned and headed back to town, never pushing past thirty. He imagined sleeping on the job, like Fred Pierce. How long till it came to that?

  He saw the lights of White Falls glittering along the black river. Nothing would happen now. But he remembered Delores and Flo in the grocery store, how little they needed him. He realized why Horton did it, this job—saw that it gave his life order and sense, one clear purpose. He could come home and tell Flo: I found Matt Fry. And for a night or a week she would see that he was necessary, to her, to this whole town.

  This was all Willy wanted: to be necessary, in his mother’s eyes and in his own. He wanted to make up for his failures, for deserting Iona that night last June, for leaving Matt Fry on the tracks and driving his friends home, for sitting in the car while Delores walked to her door.

  He stopped at the Park Inn for coffee and drank it at the counter. It was well past midnight, already April. Fool’s Day, he thought, five hours till dawn. He heard laughter behind him. Someone knew. He spun on his stool, a half turn, and saw two girls in the back booth eating giant cinnamon rolls. Just drunk—they weren’t laughing at him. Sharla Wilder and Iona Moon. Why tonight, he thought, why her? He threw a dollar on the counter. As he left, he caught his reflection in the glass door, a boy drowning in his father’s uniform.

&nbs
p; Two weeks later, Iona imagined Willy on the streets again. She was already half cocked and had no intention of stopping. If she swerved on her way home, took her corners too wide, she knew that Willy—Officer Hamilton—would be the one to drag her downtown. For your own protection, he’d say. And she’d tell him: You should have thought of that the last time.

  She and Sharla were at the Roadstop, tossing darts. They came here often, whenever Sharla had a night off, shot pool and drank beer till one of them missed the cue ball and they laughed so hard they had to hug each other to keep from falling. Sometimes Sharla’s laughter turned to sobs by the time they got to the parking lot, and on those nights Iona felt suddenly sober and wished she lived alone.

  Sharla’s dart stuck in the wall instead of the board. That was the end of the game. Buck Caudill yelled over the bar, told her she was through, and two men in cowboy hats took the rest of the darts from Iona.

  “Assholes,” Sharla said.

  But Iona knew they had to do it and blamed Sharla: she might nick somebody’s ear the next time.

  The smell of sawdust and spilled beer mingled with the smell of sweat. Only ten, Iona thought, but she felt trouble already, a fight about to spark. It wasn’t just the smell. It was the heat too, this warm night in April, balmy almost, more like July, so everyone was on edge, and she felt something prickly moving over her bare skin, as if the air itself had a charge.

  Jay Tyler sat alone at the bar, drinking tequila by the shot and chasing it with a draft. Iona wished she could say: Glad to see you out. But no matter how she put it, the words sounded sarcastic.

  Sharla couldn’t get a turn at the pool table and wanted to go. Iona said she felt like getting looped. “We can get bombed at home,” Sharla said. “You can drink rum and Cokes till you fall out of your chair.” Iona couldn’t face the thought of another night in Sharla’s kitchen with Maywood watching over them. They’d smoke cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the other until their faces blurred.

  Once, through this haze, Sharla had whispered: “I used to think she did it on purpose.” She meant the mother on the wall.

  Maywood said: I don’t want to know.

  “She was sick,” Iona said.

  “She was unhappy.”

  I don’t want to know anything.

  “She died of pneumonia, Sharla.”

  “She wanted to be gone.”

  Maywood closed her eyes. What did you expect me to do?

  The dim bar was safer than Sharla’s place on nights like these. Bodies stayed whole even when faces turned fuzzy. Iona watched a gang clustered at a table. Bright lips, wet teeth—mouths fluttered too fast to read words. Boys picked tobacco off their tongues with one hand and reached under the table with the other while the jukebox played the same song over and over: footsteps and slamming doors.

  Iona stared at Jay. His mouth was closed, a thin line. Even when he drank he barely parted his lips. Bodies wavered, blocking her vision, and Sharla said, “I’m out o’ here.”

  Iona didn’t know which was worse—imagining Sharla and Maywood in the kitchen alone or sitting there with them. But she knew how she’d find Sharla hours from now: asleep in the chair, her head on the table, the fluorescent light humming. Iona swayed, almost dancing. “Think I’ll stay awhile,” she said, and Sharla muttered, “I figured.”

  Iona pictured herself dancing with Jay, pulling him from his stool, holding him close enough so he wouldn’t need his cane. She inched toward him. None of this could happen. She knew that. But she still had five dollars in her pocket. She thought she might offer to buy him a drink. Funny idea: dirt-poor daughter of a potato farmer buying a shot for the pretty blond boy with perfect teeth. Pretty, like Jeweldeen, not anymore. Someone had started the song again, a torment, a joke: no more footsteps after all, no more jeans on the floor. Twyla Catts plunked herself down on the stool next to Jay, and Darryl McQueen sat on the other side of her. At first Iona thought it was coincidence: they couldn’t be together. Surely Twyla hadn’t given up a linebacker and a second baseman to hang out with a gangly guy from the diving team. But Darryl put his hand low on Twyla’s back, slipped the tips of his fingers inside her pants. He wasn’t even a good diver.

  Twyla leaned close to Jay. She wore a low-cut top, white with red stripes. Iona thought her breasts might pop out any minute, might spring free of the stretchy cloth like a pair of jack-in-the-boxes.

  Twyla’s high voice cracked above the chatter of the crowd. “Didn’t you used to be Jay Tyler?”

  Darryl slapped the bar and hooted. “That’s a good one,” he said, “‘used to be.’”

  “I just meant—” Twyla was too wasted to know what she meant. Didn’t you used to do double somersaults off the high board? Didn’t you used to be the best-looking guy in school?

  Jay spit a single word in Twyla’s ear, downed the last shot, threw a five on the bar, and headed for the door.

  Twyla puffed up red, cheeks and chest ready to burst. She yelled after him. “You can’t call me that.” He pounded his cane into the floor with each step. “Fucking cripple.”

  The last word hit Jay like a stone flung at his back. He stumbled but kept moving. People got out of his way. Darryl grabbed Twyla’s wrist. “Sit your ass down before I knock you down,” he said.

  The space Jay had opened with his swinging cane closed quickly. Twyla pulled her jacket around her shoulders, and Darryl yelled to Buck, “I’m dry, buddy.”

  Iona squeezed through the crowd. She found Jay outside, propped against the first car in the lot, a long tan Oldsmobile, somebody’s daddy’s car.

  He pretended he didn’t notice her, but he stared at her feet, her unbroken legs, and she felt him blaming her. “I don’t know if you remember me,” she said.

  He looked at her face now. “I didn’t crack my head,” he said, “just my legs.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I remember you,” Jay said. “What of it?”

  “She’s a bitch.”

  “I used another word.”

  “You shouldn’t let people like her bother you.”

  Jay hit the car with his cane. “She doesn’t.” He whacked the car again, harder, and Iona thought she heard the cane split. “You know what bothers me?” He hit his right knee with the cane. “This bothers me.” He swung again, smacking his left thigh. “And this.” He raised the stick as if he meant to strike her, but whirled instead to hit the car. “This goddamned car bothers me. Whose fucking car is this anyway?” He pounded the hood until the cane splintered and hung limp. “Look what you made me do,” he said, turning to face Iona.

  He started down the lot and Iona followed. “Let me drive you,” she said.

  “I may be a fucking cripple,” he said, “but I can drive. Even a fucking cripple can drive a fucking car.”

  “You’re drunk. Let me take you home.”

  “Your place or mine, baby?” He sounded mean, even to himself.

  “Wherever you want to go.”

  “You’re not scared of me, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody has to worry about a cripple.”

  “Let me drive you.”

  He said, “I don’t want to go home,” but he walked to her car with her, limping, unsteady without his cane.

  “Where to?” she said as they pulled onto the highway.

  “Just drive.”

  She headed toward the Flats, and they didn’t talk. She wanted to say: I know you. She wanted to tell him about crawling through the snow, how Leon showed her that even when you’re on your knees and frozen to the bone, you can choose to live. She had almost forgotten at times; but when she did, Leon swatted her butt, whispered in her ear: Not this way, not this way, God. And even when she didn’t believe in God, she believed in her brother who had saved her with those words.

  She started humming the song that had played over and over in the bar.

  “I hate that tune,” Jay said. He flicked on the radio, and Iona let him r
un through the stations before she said it didn’t work.

  “Me neither.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “No, I s’pose not.” Jay whistled a rift of the song he said he hated. “It’s stuck in my head,” he told her.

  Iona nodded. A lot of things were stuck in her head: stars flung in a summer sky the night Jay gave Willy Hamilton directions to her house and got them lost; a day, months later, when she stood behind the wire fence and watched Jay leap, first air, then water. She saw it all: Willy pinned to the hood of the car and Jay saying, Sorry, buddy, I’ll make it up to you. And he did. His knees bent, his feet slapped the blue surface. Jay came up grinning, and Willy won the day. Only Iona knew this was deliberate and just, reparation for a dirty girl with crooked teeth.

  Jay stared at Iona’s hands, thinking of all the times she must have washed her mother’s body. No wonder she wasn’t afraid. He remembered how she held him in the back seat of Willy’s Chevy, how skinny she was, how strong.

  “I was an asshole,” Jay said.

  She nodded. She thought he meant tonight, outside the bar.

  “I should have beat the crap out of him.”

  “Who?”

  “Willy.”

  She realized he was talking about that other night on this road. “I didn’t blame you,” she said.

  “You should have.”

  “He was your friend.”

  “So were you.”

  Friend, she was amazed to hear him call her that.

  He watched her, looked at her body—yellow arms and dark face, tangled hair and sharp nose, all her frail bones almost visible. Strange comfort, this girl, but it did comfort him to think of her ribs and knees, her bony pelvis, all the parts of her he would feel if he lay down beside her, nothing soft and simple, just the hard fact of this particular girl, this night, this body against his own.

  She punched off the lights as she turned up the rutted road that led to her father’s house. “Don’t want to wake them,” she said.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I want to show you the barn and the outhouse. I want you to smell the cows. I want you to know how we live, out here on the Flats.” She hit the brakes and put the car in reverse, started backing up the road. “But I can just take you home—if that’s what you want.”